Inside Ford’s new Advanced Manufacturing Center, an engineer stands in front of a 3D printing machine churning out brake parts for Ford’s soon-to-be-introduced Shelby Mustang GT500. Across the room, two team members strap on virtual reality headsets to design and simulate production lines, while another is working alongside a collaborative robot, programming a safer way to install a vehicle part.
These technologies are no longer simply a Hollywood vision of the future. For Ford, which has been breaking new ground in auto production for more than a century, they are critical tools and technologies to improve the complex and demanding task of building cars and trucks. And this is all happening every day under one roof at the company’s new $45 million Advanced Manufacturing Center in Redford.
“More than 100 years ago, Ford created the moving assembly line, forever changing how vehicles would be mass-produced,” said Joe Hinrichs, Ford’s president of Global Operations. “Today, we are reinventing tomorrow’s assembly line – tapping technologies once only dreamed of on the big screen – to increase our manufacturing efficiency and quality.”
Approximately 100 experts work at the development hub for cutting-edge manufacturing technologies, including 3D printing, augmented and virtual reality, robotics, digital manufacturing and more.
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SOURCE: Ford Motor Company
